


Just Business 2 - Dooper

by PanPacificPines



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Implied Pinecest, pinecest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 14:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8894638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanPacificPines/pseuds/PanPacificPines
Summary: Here’s Part 2 of 'Just Business', the fic that introduced the twins' secretary Cynthia. I'm posting it as a stand alone work because I wrote this so that it can hopefully be read and understood as a oneshot. The goal is for each of the chapters to be their own semi-noir vignette in the lives of Dipper and Mabel, paranormal hunters.
The twins are out in the field, in the middle of a hunt already in progress, rushing to finish the contract before nightfall.





	

The wheels of the black, ’96 impala kicked up rocks and dirt, creating dusty clouds as Mabel skidded across one country road and onto the next. The back seat of the car filled with yaps and barks as the little pink animal carrier, carefully belted into the seat, leaned from one side to the other.

“Great. It’s still barking,” Dipper groaned. “I can’t believe you want to bring that thing home with us!”  
“Relax, it’s-” she spun the wheel, hitting a lump in the field with the trunk of their car, “-totally cute! And you know it’s harmless, bro.” She rammed another one of the creatures head on, cutting it roughly in half. “Besides! If we don’t take care of Lil’ Dooper, who will?” One more fibrous thump on the hood sounded out before Dipper responded.  
“You named it!? After me!? There is no way that thing is stepping one foot into our house!” Mabel simply rolled her eyes as Dipper’s reaction.  
“Just calm down and grab your axe, Dip. There’s a few left. We can talk it over with Cyn. Let her cast the deciding vote?”He hefted the heavy blade in his hand and huffed.

“As if you haven’t already texted her…” He grumbled, though the last comment sent over his shoulder was clearly only the last blow thrown in retreat. His mind wasn’t in it anymore. If he let that distract him on a hunt he wouldn’t be very good at what he did.  
One last controlled spin, and three more lumps fell to the skidding wheels and metallic bulk of their car. The very moment the gear clicked into park Dipper’s door flew open and he bolted out, axe swinging, severing limbs and lumps left and right. ‘And he is good at it’, Mabel thought peacefully, as her brother seemed to move through space as if he were in an action movie, every movement choreographed to put him exactly where he wanted to be. Monstrous white claws slashed at him, only to find empty air where he once was. Mabel was out the driver side door only a moment after her brother, taking a quick moment to look back into the animal carrier. Dooper yapped excitedly.  
“I’ll be right back, buddy!” Mabel called through the open door, before kicking it shut. Then the twin machetes she’d had sheathed across her lap emerged without a sound, and she danced into the fray alongside her own twin. Mabel herself was like a manic pixie death squad, or a whirling dervish of death; though she’d been born at least twenty years too late to have ever called herself the latter.

The serious, laser focus of her brother’s expression counterpoised Mabel’s. He deftly dodged a swinging hook or claw to hack at its bearer’s back, then taking out its legs, only to deliver a final crushing blow with the weight of his instrument smashing down on a creature’s face. She chose instead to slash apart any and all of the creatures around her by never slowing down. A monstrous hand turned into confetti in half a dozen slashes before it could get anywhere close to her.

Mabel made her way through the stragglers that crashed like waves on her brother’s rocky and unforgiving shore, and slammed the other door closed as well. The precaution proved unnecessary, however, as a quick head count, especially of those rolling free of their former owners, saw more monsters on the ground than were still up. Suddenly, in her moment’s distraction, two rows of pale white teeth managed to clamp down around one of her blades. The machetes were ground to a cruel edge, but were wide enough for the thing’s jaws to really bite in and grab hold, even if the mouth they belonged to were in the middle of getting a Glasgow smile. 

“Dipper!” Mabel called out as she released her grip on the machete, rolling to the side. As she sprang back up, the back of her opponent’s body exploded out through its chest as an angry axe caught it in the back. Without losing too much of her momentum, she turned to the downed creature and stomped down hard on the handle of her weapon, completing the decapitation.

“Watch yourself!” Dipper chided over his shoulder, though there was no anger in the shout.  
“Hey! You left your door open! I had to shut it!” She took one final swing with all her might and cleaved her last target down the middle, leaving it staggering for a moment before finally collapsing.  
“Sorry, you’re right,” he panted out, eyes darting from lump to lump. “You got a head count?”  
“Sixty-Three.” A squelching sound at her feet reminded her to finish off the twitching mass, which she did with another stomp. “Sixty Four. Counting Those?” She motioned over to the farmhouse a hundred or so yards away. There was a collection of white lumps, riddled with buckshot. “I’d say at least... seventy-eight?”

“Not good enough,” Dipper grunted, gazing across the fields for any sign of movement. “Fourteen per row, six rows, that’s eighty-four. So we’re off by six. That’s not enough for a paycheck.”

“Hey, how big do you think the Fraggles are around here?” Mabel quipped offhandedly. He simply rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the count, hacking little X marks into the ones he had already counted, just to be sure.  
Dipper marked off each of the bodies as he went, making sure to only mark the heads with an X where Mabel had separated body from face, adding them to the count they’d established last in the car to confirm the total. Though it took him a moment or two longer than he’d imagined, it wasn’t as though the bodies were well uniform. While one might have looked like an evil white carrot, stretched out and tall, the next could have been a rutabaga, lumpy and dumpy. He found that Mabel was right on target, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from triple-counting again while they were in the clear. Mabel, meanwhile, busied herself with widening the search little by little, keeping in sight of her brother. She didn’t have to look very long, though, just downhill from the farmhouse she found the last of the creatures. 

“Whoop whoooop! We got a hit, Dip! It’s the last one!”  
Dipper’s brow furrowed and he scrabbled up the dirt track road.   
“Hey! Don’t get excited, there’s supposed to be six! Don’t go running off on your own-” Before he could finish, he’d caught up with her and was able to see what the fuss was about. Cresting the mound of dirt and grass to stand next to her, he spotted an enormous lump attempting to eat one of the apple trees in the valley orchard beneath the hill. The thing was distant, but easily as tall as one of the trees.

“Well, shit. Guess that’s the rest of ‘em-”  
“Boss Fight!” Mabel interrupted with giddy joy, hopping in place.  
“Oi,” her brother groaned. “Okay, okay, I know you’re excited, but-”  
“I already checked! Look, see the two legs it’s standing on?”  
“Mmhmm,” He agreed.

“Okay, well it’s really four, they’re super thick because it’s actually two pairs fused together to support it’s big ol’ head. So we’ve got four, two coming out of the back makes six, eight with the two on the left, and two more in front like weird, knobby leg-boobs.” One by one she squinted and pointed out each pair of legs sticking haphazardly out of the lump at odd angles. By the time she got to the ‘leg boobs’, she was holding both hands in front of her, pretending her index fingers were tiny legs, kicking them about.  
“Okay, okay, good work, but there’s still one left. That would be twelve legs,” Dipper countered.

“True, but maybe he ate the last one, or it wandered off, or is right around the corner. I say we take out Grandpa Lumpy down there and do a quick sweep. Who knows, maybe we miscounted before? If they can grow together like that, then maybe one of them was a conjoined twin and we didn’t know. Or maybe it didn’t even pop up at all; but also we should check the cabbage patch once we’re done.”  
“W-What?” Taken aback by the sudden swerve in the conversation, Dipper was genuinely stunned for a moment, until the Mabel translation circuit ticked over. “Oh, because if you’d expect to catch monsters sprouting out of the ground, there’s two places to check, right?”

“Pet cemeteries and cabbage patches, cuz hell if those things aren’t the scariest toy I’ve ever seen.” They repeated in unison, quoting their great-uncle Stan from just after their last movie marathon a couple summers back.  
“Alright Mabes.” He finally relented, the mention of family softening his features into a warm smile. “We gotta talk to him after all this is done anyway.”  
“Hey, don’t yell at him, he didn’t know,” Mabel pouted, her eyes losing a bit of their twinkle from their moment of reverie a second before.  
“Oh, I know. I just figure that he could carve a replacement for us. El museo de los antiguos aztecas definitely doesn’t need a real, and active artifact sitting in the display room. It’s just volcanic rock, right? I’ve seen him do more with less.”  
“Why, you crooked so-and-so!” Mabel’s brightness redoubled, and she was already imagining the future, job complete, paycheck in hand, and a terrycloth bathrobe awaiting her back at home. “I’m gonna have so many mimosas with fancy champagne!”

“Uh…huh…” Dipper side-eyed her. She looked positively charged with energy, excited to get a move on. “Okay, whatever, just keep your eyes open. That thing is big. No telling what that could mean. We should probably go back for the crossbow… …Mabel, are you payin- God damn it, Mabel, were you even listening!?” He shouted over to his sister who was already excitedly charging downhill, machetes flailing wildly as she attempted her best Zinga Warrior Princess cry. It came out more like a gargling mastiff with a yodeler caught in its throat.  
Mabel always got a sort of thrill when she ran with sharp objects. Something in the toddler part of her brain really jumped at the chance. So when she went careening downhill she felt a few moments of unadulterated, childlike joy. Then she came blade to back with the enormous vegetal mass. Maybe her young adult brain could have taken a few more moments to truly process the bulk of the obstacle in front of her. The blades bit in, but not more than a few inches. Pulling them out was a bit of a struggle in and of itself, even if the thing wasn’t trying to turn to face her. Neckless, it stomped around in a half circle just to try to face her, while she, bouncing on one foot, did her best to pry her weapons loose.  
“Damn it, you are NOT going to eat Lucy and Ethel with your butt! Or whichever part of you this is…”

She stumbled backwards a few feet once the thin metal instruments popped loose. Then it hit her, not literally, not yet. The thing was at least fifteen feet tall, and looked like a giant head on two stubby little legs. Stubby only by comparison though. It wobbled as it moved, seemingly clumsy, thinner down below, and widening as it grew taller, the face that she was expecting was a mess. At least four mouths, strewn about the front of it bellowed a roar while eight beady eyes rolled around and eventually trained on her. It didn’t look so clumsy then, stomping towards her with malice in its various face parts. ‘One’ of its ‘arms’ was just like the legs that supported it, two that had grow together, thick and stubby, but it looked like it could crush bricks in its pale white hand. Another was skinny and long, as if it might have been one arm growing out of the other. While dodging a swing from it Mabel thought she might’ve seen fingers sprouting out of the elbow joint.  
“You are one big-ass ugly radish.” As if responding to the insult, the thing shrieked at her, swiping with each of its arms, the legs kicking in opposite directions to keep it balanced. The reddish hue made it obvious that this one was more ripe than its siblings, dirt still clinging to its lower half told her that it must have emerged last. ‘Lucky us’ She thought, rolling under a long swing from its extended arm to try to hack at the limb with her machetes. They practically bounced off. The flesh, if it could be called that, was much woodier and more developed than the creatures she’d dispatched so easily before.  
“I’m gonna call you Grandpa Lumpy!” She exclaimed, pointing a blade at it. “What do you think of that?” Predictably, it didn’t like that anymore than anything else she said, and charged again. If she was hoping it would stumble over its own feet and topple like an overbalanced, top heavy toddler, she was mistaken. A slash from its long arm missed her but gouged slashes out of the nearby apple tree. 

“Mabel! Move away!” Came a shout from the hill. She was leaping to the side even before she fully recognized her brother’s voice. At the end of the tuck and roll she popped up to see a red hot ball crash into Grandpa Lumpy’s enormous head with a sizzling crack. The smoke trail lead her eyes right to where Dipper stood, loading another flare into the single-shot gun and firing again, this time aiming for one of the mouths. “Go to the car and get your crossbow!” he commanded. “I’ll keep it busy! Just go!” Another sizzle-crack signaled the round making contact with the vegetal monstrosity. Mabel hesitated only for a moment, looking back and forth between the monster and her twin before running off.  
The beast bellowed again at Dipper, shrieking anew with each stinging bolt. Forgotten, it stepped on the first flare that’d bounced off, steaming and popping as it burned into to the woody heel. The bright red glow seemed to block out all other light, making the monstrosity appear even angrier and uglier than it already had been. Dipper tossed the flare gun away and hefted his axe in both hands. The rounds took time to load and there was nothing to distract it now. He wouldn’t get a second chance to shoot it before the thing charged.

“Shit, I was hoping you’d be more flammab-Shit!” As he backed away, sizing up his opponent, a heel was stopped by a rock jutting out of the dirt path, and the momentary lapse in focus was all the thing needed. It was on him in an instant, much faster than he would have judged. All he could do was blindly swing his axe and hope to hit something. It bit deep in between the eyes and mouth of one of its several faces, but that was the end of his luck. The eyes went dark but the easily half ton of bulk hit him. Its long arm hit him in the side and sent Dipper flying.  
Static filled his senses after the impact with the ground. Then an iron grip had his right arm, pinning it painfully into the ground. He couldn’t yet focus his eyes but the shadow the thing cast over him darkened the sky from where he lay.  
“F-fuck you, Grandpa Lumpy” Dipper croaked out as the hot breath steamed inches away from his face. If he was going to be eaten by a giant radish he could at least be shitty about it.  
“Get off by brother you big, red, asshole!” came Mabel’s war cry, charging in from the side a half second before she flew through the air, plowing into the oblique of the thing, plunging a pitchfork in just under the long arm. The metal tines of the fork split open the face hidden in its armpit, and the gangly, but surprisingly strong limb went stiff. From Dipper’s perspective, the tableau was in slow motion. His twin’s body crashing into the top heavy beast tipped it a bit, but even through his blurry vision he could see that it wasn’t enough. The broad, stocky feet dug into the dirt, bracing it against the impact. But the thick, ropey fingers that clamped his arm like a vice loosened ever so slightly.  
He had barely half an inch of slack but it was enough. Immediately his arm shot down to where his revolver was holstered at his side. He had to twist his hip and shoulder painfully to reach it, but even as the top of the monster wobbled back to re-balance the snap of his holster was undone. His fingers wrapped around the well worn wooden handle of the old gun, sinking into the slight finger grooves worn into it by time and use. Acting on instinct alone he aimed for the bulbous knobbly left knee.  
The slug tore through the joint, exploding out the other side, and even as the recoil was jolting his arm, sending pain radiating through the spots where the fingers had gripped him he pressed the hot muzzle into the thing’s arm and squeezed the trigger. Time suddenly seemed to play in regular speed again as he Dipper finally took a breath he didn’t know he’d had knocked out of him. Blinking away the stars and blackness he fought his way to his feet again as the monster crashed into the ground, leg shattered into splinters. He could feel his heartbeat in his head, gasping for air even as his sister screamed defiant bloody murder.  
Her machetes thunked and smacked into the woody flesh, hacking triangular wedges out of the flailing arms. It kicked, struggled, and shrieked, but more and more of its body faded to grey as the signals failed to reach the slivers of finger and hand felled under her relentless blows. By the Time Dipper’s ears worked again he realized she wasn’t just screaming. Tinnitus from the shots forced him to pop his ears over and over but the sound of his name was unmistakable. She was crying, and cursing the thing for trying to kill him. The arms and legs on her side of the body were already motionless but she was quickly reducing them to stumps. Shakily, he called out to her.  
“Ugh, Mabel-Mabes! Back up! Ear plugs!” Chest heaving, eyes glittering with moisture, she turned to him with to see that he was okay before understanding. He could see that she had when she jumped back and covered her ears. He dug into his pockets for the linty foam plugs, pushing them into each ear before leveling the revolver at the thing. His third shot sank deep into the ‘forehead’ where it seemed none of the vital bits were, but then a calming hand came to rest on his wrist. His sister gave him a reassuring nod, and with her help guiding his aim he put the next three rounds, one after the other, in between the glowing dots of light of Grandpa Lumpy’s eyes. The kicking and shrieking stopped as the last of the glow faded, finally dead. 

Pain shot through his arm as his twin wrapped him in a desperate hug and hoisted him off the air.

“OhmygodI’msosorryIthoughtyouweregonnadieIshouldn’thaverunoffI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry!”

“Mabel!”

“Please don’t be hurt or angry! No, you deserve to be angry, I should have had my crossbow. Oh god, this is my fault!” He winced as she buried her face into his chest where he apparently had another bruise he was unaware of. His legs kicked as he fought for breath until she at last relented, setting him back on the ground, sniffling and taking a step back, looking horrified.

“Oh god. I’m so stupid. You must be really hurt. God, I just fucked up everyth-“ He interrupted her with one of his own hugs, even if his ribs did scream in protest.

“Mabel. You saved my life. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be experiencing some kind of vegan nightmare, okay?” He brushed her tears away with his thumbs as the dark humor of the situation finally made her giggle at him. Dipper kissed her forehead then pressed his own to hers, coming nose to nose with his sister. “You saved my life. I’m not mad, and I love you. Okay?”  
“Okay” She agreed, after a moment, sniffling and brushing her arm across her face. “Okay…” Mabel took a deep breath and allowed herself to let him go, stepping away. “Are you sure?”  
“Yeah” He nodded, turning to his gun and grimacing “Though I didn’t want to have to use this. I had it loaded with the silver rounds. Stupid of me. The damn bullets cost five bucks a piece. So there’s thirty dollars down the drain if I can’t fish the bits back out. Though I could always melt down some of my old quarters.” Dipper sighed, surveying the scene, mapping out everything that’d just happened, one detail at last clicking into place. “Hey, Mabes. I’m confused. I saw you run off that way-“ he motioned back up the path on the hill where their car was. “-but you came from that way.” His hand swept over in the direction of the orchard, where there was a rundown old barn at one end. 

“Well….yeah…” Mabel turned her eyes down to the dirt, kicking up a mote of dust as she did. “About that; the doors were locked, and you have the keys. I sorta panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I coulda busted in the window and unlocked the trunk, but that would have taken so long. I couldn’t leave you alone out there. So I grabbed a pitchfork and hauled ass.” She turned back up to him with a smile, perhaps remembering the adrenaline rush. “I couldn’t lose you, Dip.” He breathed out a sigh of relief, feeling the soreness in his ribs even as he did. Though one detail was still bugging him, Mabel could tell instantly thanks to the way he furrowed his brow and chewed on his upper lip for a lack of any nearby pens.  
“But…” He looked from one side of the scene to the other “Where did you-?”

“Pfuh, Dip. It’s a farm. Where aren’t there pitchforks? But really, I’m sorta shocked at you for missing one detail.” Her own lips disappeared into a mischievous, if a bit distracting, smirk. She wiggled slightly with excitement too, which came with its own distractions for Dipper.

“Oh? And what have I forgotten?” Dipper raised an eyebrow, feeling as though he were biting a baited hook. Mabel half skip, half bounced over to him to boop him on the nose before making her way back over to the thoroughly dead Grandpa Lumpy and waved for his attention, as though she didn’t already have it. She presented with her hands the giant hulk as though she were a model on The Price is The Price or Wheel of Money. Then Mabel drew his attention down, to where a tail would be growing if it’d had any kind of predictable anatomy. There were a series of misshapen pale roots sprouting out from it. They snaked along behind and along the ground past the tree.  
“Shit, how could I have missed that?” He thought, even as his hands worked unconsciously to load chamber new rounds into his gun, snapping his eyes down for a moment to check his work before snapping it back shut. Mabel pulled up the roots, tiny little hairs and tendrils clung to the ground even with the creature dead, small bits of dust shot up when one of the little crawlers was unearthed with a pop. Yanking up easily more than twenty feet of tendrils as she went, Mabel disappeared behind the apple tree that Grandpa Lumpy had apparently been trying to eat. She popped out for an instant to stick out her tongue and hold up a finger as if to say ‘wait right there’ so he did. With a grunt and some strain she tore out the last few feet of vine and emerged triumphantly with what looked like an ill-tempered rutabaga at the end of a rope.  
“Tadaaa!” Mabel presented her catch with a small flourish. Two stumpy little legs dangled beneath the body, which also happened to be its head. The final radish had a face like a jack-o-lantern and two small green leaves were folded flat atop its head, looking for all the world like a toupee. It spun slightly as it kicked, dangling upside down by its root. “Lookie! I got the last one!” she beamed triumphantly, the terror of just a few minutes ago long forgotten.

“Huh, so you did” Dipper mused, strolling over to reclaim his axe. “We’d better finish the job so we can get the hell outta here. I’m gonna be too sore to move if we don’t.”

“Awww, c’mon, Dip! Lil’ Turnip-Head doesn’t even have any teeth!” She implored him, dangling the cranky vegetable in front of his face. “See? No teeth! Ooh, strong grip though.” Mabel tested her claim by placing a stick in its mouth, which it immediately chomped down on. It wasn’t strong enough to bite through, though it clung on for dear life. The look he gave her wasn’t a glare. There was no anger in it, merely exhaustion.

“You named it.”

“Hey! You can’t be mad at me for this one. It’s so obviously a Lil’ Turnip-Head you’d have come up with it too! And besides,” Mabel’s grin turned feral, like something they might’ve seen on their Great Uncle. “Maybe they’ll pay extra for a little one. They could totally charge twenty bucks a head to see ‘The world’s most evil root vegetable!’ and I think that’s worth at least another, what, hundred bucks for us?” He could only shake his head and laugh.

“Lemme guess, if they don’t want it, you get to keep it?”

“It’s only fair!” she shouted back, like a child caught buttering up a parent for an allowance bump.

“Okay, okay, it’s only fair. But I’m studying this one and the other one before I make any promises, okay?” She was already bouncing up and down in celebration before he decided he was done talking. A swift chop of his axe severed the roots from the base of the giant radish. Briefly the bouncing ball of fury his sister was dangling seemed to stiffen up and then relax, losing most of its former rage, seeming more confused than irate. “Huh, well that’s something.” Their eyes met, and small nods and eye gestures cultivated over their lifetimes were like a brief conversation that only the two of them would have understood. With a final nod Mabel hacked off enough of a line to give herself a decent leash as her brother coiled up the rest over his arm. As he did with every hunt, he occupied himself with clean up duty, working with a hum in his voice. 

His sister secured a bushel basket and lid to drop Lil’ Turnip-Head in and joined her brother. While he busied himself with collecting samples from their quarry, she grabbed the car keys from him and transported whatever he thought might’ve been important to its own bag, in the trunk. He even managed to pry out four of the silver slugs from the creature, though the other two were gone for good.  
Then finally she joined him with a pair of shovels as he descended on the radish field. It was clear enough which one that was. Dozens of craters littered the field where the menagerie of floral fiends had emerged. What they were looking for was buried just a foot deep in the center. Dipper thanked a few of the deities he was aware of for their luck that the farmers had decided to test the artifact in one of the smaller fields. Apples, corn, and indeed even Cabbages outnumbered the radishes by the hundreds. It’d be hard to keep that from the government’s Paranormal Affairs Department. Or whatever they called themselves. If they had any idea what Dipper and Mabel were doing, it’s unlikely they’d be getting paid for their assistance. 

They hacked through dead roots that clung to the stone to unearth a surprisingly heavy slab of elaborately carved volcanic rock. Which just so happened to look remarkably similar to another one that just so happened to find itself in their trunk, though that one hadn’t been decorated yet.  
The real one was stowed safely inside several layers of burlap and secured inside an ancient looking wood and iron chest, runes carved all over it. When the lock clicked shut the air seemed to taste slightly different, and sounds felt a little more familiar on his skin. The strange senses a relic hunter needs to develop may be difficult to describe, but there was no doubt that the magics felt safely contained, and that was enough. 

A second silent eye conversation took place between the two when Mabel’s hand came to rest on a lumpy burlap sack. He thought for a second and nodded to her. With a return nod of her own she took it and began reaching in to scatter chunks of pumice and bits of turquoise, pyrite, and amethyst around the field. Dipper felt reservations about any kind of dishonesty with customers, but ones that were this careless with such powerful works of magic could do with a little dishonesty. When she was done her work, the last of their tools were stowed away and they turned to ‘the hard part’ of the job.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hell naw I ain’t payin’ ye any more! You come in here makin’ a ruckus and thrawin’ shitall over, you got some nerve askin’ fer more!”

“Again, sir, we’re not asking for any more than was in the agreement, that, may I remind you, you signed. “

“Shyet, you want yer money? G’wan out’der ‘n look. That field you’n’her tore up is gonna cost me at least that much ta re-till! You can fuck on off te back wherever’n the hell you came from then.”

“Fine. I was being nice, but you leave me no choice. My ….associates will be by shortly to finish collecting. Assuming you’re still alive when they get here, of course. If you’re not I’m sure we’ll get a settlement from your estate, what with the contract having been fulfilled, services rendered, but no record of payment.” Dipper turned to leave, motioning with his head for Mabel to follow. She gave an overly theatrical shrug of her own and made to follow.

“Now just what’n’the fuck’r you talkin’ ‘bout? You thre’tn’n me?”

“No, of course not. There’s no need to.” Dipper tossed over his shoulder as he descended the wooden stairs, red paint peeling and flaking off of every surface. He walked a few more steps before giving them a mirth filled expression. “You see, we haven’t told you how to keep it from spreading yet. Do you grow pumpkins? I figure those’ll look pretty cool as homunculi. Corn is outright- well, have you seen The Step-Children of the Corn? Surprisingly accurate.”

“Though it’ll probably be the cabbages that getcha!” Mabel just couldn’t resist.  
The unmistakable click of a shotgun stopped them dead in their tracks.

“I think maybe y’all’re jus gonna tell me how to do that before’n ya get outta here so quick like.” Before either of them turned around Mabel seemed wracked with a bout of insane laughter. She clutched at her face to try to stifle it, but to no avail. Frustrated, the farmer fired the gun once into the air and cocked it again, aiming between the two of them. “Ain’t gonna ask agin.” Though his voice wavered a bit; neither of them had flinched when he fired, and that fact was hard not to notice.

“Put that away before you embarrass yourself even further, you dolt.” Came Dipper’s eerily calm reprimand.

“Besides, that thing better be loaded with silver if you expect it to do you any good.” Mabel’s head steadily rotated around to face him, bearing long ivory fangs he hadn’t seen before, and eerie purple eyes. “You really should …” she trailed off, allowing Dipper to pick up her sentence seamlessly.

“-Be more careful who you sign contracts with, Mister Cooterville. They might just-“

“Come back to bite ya!” Mabel hissed into his ear. The moment he turned his attention back to her brother she slid right beside him to place a steel fingered grip on the gun, pointing it harmlessly into the air.  
“Shyeeet! Fine! Fine! Y’all c’n have yer money! Jus’ get offa my property’n never come back! ...A-and tell me how ta get rid o’ whate’er y’all were yappin’ ‘bout a minute ago!” He relinquished the grip of his firearm to stumble inside the door frame, where he noticed Mabel paused, glaring and hissing at him. He fumbled in a basket near the door, and to Mabel’s pleasant surprise, pulled out a wad of assorted bills, tossing it to her. “It’s all there o’course. I was only funnin’ y’all before. I-it’s all there, like I said. I promise.” She quickly flipped through the money, giving it a sniff as she did, then glaring back at the farmer.  
“Who all’s at the door?!” Came an elderly female voice from inside. A quick adjustment of her focus and Mabel could see a shadow on the far inside wall, of a woman in a rocking chair.

“I-it’s them folks what come and drive off all them…” he stumbled over the word “Hom-monkey-lies! They piled ‘em up out front!”

“Oh, that’s nice! Y’all can come in fer a spell and have you some tea! Lemme put it on!” He turned back, his face a blanched rictus of terror to a smiling Mabel. 

“That’s alright ma’am! Thank you!” She shouted at the top of her lungs. “We appreciate it, but we really gotta get going!” A small brown pouch hit the farmer in the chest just as she stepped back. She ejected the rest of the shells and scooped them up before dutifully running a cloth along it to remove any of her fingerprints. The last thing they needed was a crazy redneck putting the barrel down his own throat only to have the cops find her prints on the gun, after all. She tossed it into the hedge near the front door and turned, waving as she strode down the porch. 

“You’ll want to gather up all the little bits of monster you can find in one place. Get all the kosher salt you have and make a circle around the pile. Also, the ritual stone you buried out in the field, dig it up. If you’re lucky they shattered it into a million pieces so you won’t have to. Pick up those pieces and smash them even smaller. Build a big fire, if you’ve got a permit for trash burning then you should be good. The smoke is gonna be noxious and terrible. Don’t breathe too much in. And throw that bag in the fire before you start shoveling in monster bits. And you’d better be careful not to smother it. I’ve only got one of those bags.” Dipper’s voice was low, monotone, and precise. He didn’t raise it to be heard, but rather expected it to be heard regardless. 

“Or you could make three tons of the nastiest radish coleslaw on earth!” his sister quipped. Then calmly, as if nothing that’d just happened mattered in the least to him, Dipper opened the car door and paused for a moment before climbing in. This time he did call out. “By the way, the receipt is in your pocket. Have a good evening. And be kind to your wife…we’ll know if you’re not.” The cranky old hick nodded in response and jumped as Mabel popped up beside him, dangling a miniature monster in his face. 

“Hey! Didja wanna buy this thing!? He could totally be a sideshow attraction!” She added dutifully “you could make back all your money in no time! …A simple no would work.” He cowered and shielded his face by throwing his arms across it when she’d asked. She simply shrugged, stuffed Lil’ Turnip-Head in a chicken cage that she decided just then to steal. “Oh well, your loss!” She called as she skipped her way to the Impala. 

Dipper lingered just long enough to see the Farmer discover the folded pink sheet of paper in his pocket, and drop it as though it’d just bit him. While he chose to restrain his reaction, Mabel lowered her window and gave her best witchy cackle while her brother spun in a donut to kick up an obscuring wall of dust and dirt before pulling off in the direction of the main road.

 

“Holy shit, Mabes! You coulda gotten shot!” The adrenaline rush of the moment was gone. They’d both dropped the act before the farmhouse was even out of sight.

“Oh Welax Di’er” Mabel said, as she plucked the fangs loose and placed them back into the makeup kit. She’d wait until they were on a nice steady highway, or stopped at a drive through before attempting to remove the lenses. “It was fine. We scared the piss out of him so bad that he wouldn’ta been able to hit me anyway. Shame he didn’t want a new pet though. Guess we’ll have to keep him.”

“Uh, yeah, speaking of which. I think we’d better take …the other one, for a walk next chance we get. Good thing it’s getting dark. I don’t need people seeing …that, do its business looking the way it does.” A happy, yappy bark rattled the animal carrier in the back seat. “Oh good. It knows when we’re talking about it.”  
“Oh, don’t be such a meanie butt to our son, Dipper!” Mabel stuck her tongue out at him before turning to the back seat to coo into the cage. Dipper counted himself lucky that she didn’t seem to notice him pale, his heart skipping a whole rhythm section at the mention of ‘their son’ until of course, it occurred to him what she meant, snapping back to reality. “Oh god, fine, yeah, we’ll stop back near the motel. There was a diner right next to it that looked like a real ‘no questions answered, so don’t fuckin’ ask’ kinda place. We oughta be able to pick up a quick to-go order there and get going. Gonna be a long drive home.”

“We’re not gonna stay another night in the no-tell motel?” She cooed, pretending for at least the tenth time on their trip to pretend not to know what the phrase meant. She’d enjoyed being forced to sleep in the same bed with him. Not that she was prepared to say that out loud. Dipper chose to ignore the comment and simply answer the question.

“I’d love to, but I don’t think we’d get the same room and I don’t know how much bleach I have left.” She smirked. It was true that he’d whipped out a black light and scrubbed the entire room, even the TV before he’d let her sit down on the bed. “No offense, but I don’t really want to spend a night in a hotel room with those two” he motioned with his thumb, “in a motel with a no pets allowed policy. He isn’t exactly the silent type.” Two excited yaps answered him. “And I’d like to actually find out what kind of lesser demon he is. I don’t want to wake up with a proboscis in my neck.”

“Pfft. You worry too much, but fine, yes, I agree. We’ll even get our friend in the vet’s office to examine him. Y’know, check for chips and whatnot.”  
“There is no way anyone paid to put a chip in you.” Dipper glared down at the small creature in the dark of the parking lot. He’d walked off to one side under a copse of maple trees so Dooper could do his business. His lip curled up in disgust as the creature insisted on meeting his eyes. “Does it have to be my face?” He demanded, only to be met with an excited yap. And indeed, a smaller, chubbier version of his own face looked back up at him, sitting atop a pug body. 

When the twins had discovered him wandering around the fields earlier in the day he looked just like an exceptionally ugly dog until Dipper rescued it from one of the radish monsters. Then, suddenly, in a warping of skin and bone, it had his face, and an immediate attachment to the twins. Though, of course as his sister cooed and doted on the thing, she found he could change more of his body. An off-handed remark from Mabel about ‘how cute crows feet are, and how they’re basically the same feet stick figures would have if they were real’ caused the little demon to sprout two pairs of crow feet, and he clicked them happily on the ground as Mabel squirmed with joy.

Over the course of several other ‘off-handed’ comments she’d made He wound up with an even more exaggerated version of Dipper’s face, with eyes that seemed too big for his head, a bunny tail, and what she willingly described as a “body like if a potato wanted to look like a panda and also a raccoon.” The result was a chubby, fluffy little personal nightmare for Dipper. ‘At least the colors match’ He thought to himself, horrified by the idea that it might’ve wound up a patchy multi colored monstrosity.  
Mabel had, of course, elected to be the one to put their order in at the diner, leaving him in charge of their new ‘pet’. Though that gave him time to Call up Cynthia and leave her a message. His pocket buzzed with a response text.

“You know, for a demon that won’t tell me how old she is, she picked up on texting way too quickly…”

‘As far as I can tell he’s harmless. AND ADORABLe OMLG! He’s probably a prey species that got pulled through from another dimension thanks to the ripples created by the artifact. The little ones get through easier, and they tend to defend themselves with shapeshifting, trickery, or smell, when they’re that low on the totem pole. Trust me, you’d know if he was the second or third. Even the tricky ones aren’t that bright. Looks like you’re stuck with him =3’

“God damn it. I needed you on my side here.”

‘Oh, and if the other one acts up just carve a golem sigil in its head. It’s literally a vegetable, Dip, relax. If you wake up with anyone nibbling on your bits it’s either me…or…well…maybe you should stay away another night. You never know ;D’

“…Huh…well, yeah, maybe another night wouldn’t be so bad…”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
“Oh my god, yes!” Mabel squealed, bouncing up and down “what made you change your mind!?” She pleaded, setting down the take-out on the front seat of their car.

“Well, Cyn told me we probably don’t have much to worry about, and I figure we can put down some newspaper in the bathroom. It won’t smell any different, and he seems to only bark when we-“ as if on cue, Dooper yapped and wagged his entire body excitedly “-talk about him, or feed him” He motioned towards his sister’s hand as she tossed some left-overs she’d snagged from an empty booth before leaving the diner into his crate. “He might even be kinda cute after a little while, assuming you stop giving him these crazy ideas. I mean, he looks kinda like that weird cereal mascot from the eighties. All he’s missing is the antlers-” He knew it as soon as the words left his mouth, but of course, the raucous laughter that bellowed out of his sister was proof enough. 

Looking down, Dipper saw that he’d indeed sprouted a fresh pair of antlers, while he was inside the animal crate. The tips of the antlers poked through the cheap plastic. “God Damn it.” A satisfied bark resounded in the container. It was all he could do to take a few slow, deep breaths. Mabel was folded over on the ground, clutching her sides. ‘It would be worth it’ Dipper thought, ‘when she tosses an arm and leg over me in the middle of the night...’ He wasn’t going to do much sleeping anyway. He might as well enjoy the stay in the no-tell motel.


End file.
